Reviews

The Ballad of Black Tom —
Victor Lavalle

Victor
Lavalle’s 2016 novella The
Ballad of Black Tom
is a standalone tale of cosmic horror. It is a retelling of
Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook” told from a perspective
Lovecraft would never have considered.

Charles
Thomas Tester, black and forever denied full membership in American
society, supports his aged father by serving as middleman between
rich New York clients and the occult community. They want artefacts
of power; he can provide. But Tester is careful. He does his best to
limit his exposure to dread powers. Let rich white fools dabble in
the forbidden; Tester is a sensible man who plans to remain alive and sane.

The Count of Monte Cristo —
Alexandre Dumas

1844’s
The Count of Monte Cristo is a standalone novel of revenge written by
Alexandre Dumas. While it is not my usual SF, it has certainly
influenced SF. As well, there were (to my surprise) not one but two
SFnal moments in the book.

Young
Edmond Dantès has it all, from a solid career to a loving fiancée.
Alas for Dantès, success engenders jealousy. In short order he is
framed for Bonapartist subversion and secretly consigned to life
imprisonment in the forbidding Château d’If. His friends and loved
ones will never know why he vanished.

Dragonfly Falling —
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Shadows of the Apt, book 2

2009’s
Dragonfly
Falling
is the second volume in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows
of the Apt decology.

The
city-state of Collegium is the keystone of Lowland resistance to the
coming Wasp Empire conquest of the lowlands. The Empire tried — and
failed — to remove Collegium from the board with a swift, bold
gambit. No matter. When cunning fails, there is always brute force.

Binti —
Nnedi Okorafor
Binti, book 1

2016’s
Binti
is
the first volume in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series.

Early
one morning, young Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka packs her things
and leaves her home. None of her family is awake. None of them would
approve if they knew she was leaving. And why she was leaving. Binti
is abandoning her Himba community to accept a scholarship at university.

And
not just any university. Oomza Uni is on another world. Binti is not
just leaving her homeland of Namib behind. She is leaving Earth.

Babel-17 —
Samuel R. Delany

1966’s
Babel-17
is an SF novel by Samuel R. Delany. Not his first (he had already
published a number of Ace Doubles and one standalone), but the one
that made his name. It shared the Nebula with Flowers
for Algernon
and was nominated for the Hugo as well, losing to The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
It shares some elements of its setting with an earlier Delany novel,
Empire Star.

Victory
over the Invaders may depend on understanding a series of
indecipherable messages broadcast in an odd code? cipher? language?
that the authorities label Babel-17. The Alliance turns to noted
linguist Rydra Wong. “Tell us what this is and tell us what it
means!”

Deep Secret —
Diana Wynne Jones
Magid, book 1

1997’s
Deep
Secret
is the first of two novels in Diana Wynne Jones’ Magid series.

Through
no fault of his own, magid Rupert Venables is drawn into two pressing
succession problems. The first problem is to find a magid trainee.
The former head magid has died (well, he’s dead but not exactly
gone;
such is the nature of magids). Rupert is now the senior magid and
needs an apprentice and future successor. The second problem is
finding the true
heir to the Koryfonic Empire, hidden away by the previous, rather
paranoid, emperor.

It’s
no use asking the emperor himself: Timos IX is very sincerely, very
thoroughly dead. So are Timos’ friends and confidants, who might
have known where the heir had been stashed. The bomb that reduced
Timos IX to vapour was very large.

Rupert
decides backburner the question of the missing heir and focus on the
quest to find an apprentice and head-magid-to-be. That should at
least be straightforward.

Tsukumizu
Girl's Last Tour, book 3

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach —
Kelly Robson

Kelly
Robson’s 2018 Gods,
Monsters, and the Lucky Peach is
a time-travel story.

Large-scale
ecological remediation used to be a booming field. Then TERN
developed time travel and remediation faltered. Bankers were
convinced that access to the past would allow immediate remediation
of past insults to the environment. Funds for the slow, laborious
process of rebuilding the Earth’s ravaged surface have dried up.
Like too many rivers.

Minh,
one of the ecological remediators whose projects have been sidelined,
must face the inevitable: survival means joining the enemy.

Blood Binds The Pack —
Alex Wells
Hob Raveni, book 2

Blood
Binds the Pack
is the second volume in Alex Wells’
Hob Raveni series.

In
the previous volume, Hob Raveni and the Ghost Wolves achieved the
near-impossible: they assassinated Mr. Green, one of TransRift’s
psionic-adept Weathermen. But that was not the end of the story.
TransRift is determined to crush the resistance and take total
control of Tanegawa’s World. They have sent a new enforcer: Mr.
Yellow. Hob and the Wolves were lucky to kill one Weatherman. Can
they kill two?

Winds of Gath —
E. C. Tubb
Dumarest Saga, book 1

1967’s
The
Winds of Gath is
the first novel of thirty-three in E. C. Tubb’s DumarestSaga.

The
life of an itinerant stellar traveler
is hard and dangerous. Earl Dumarest accepts the hazards; traveling
is his only hope of finding his lost homeworld, Earth. He does try to
minimize risk with due diligence and planning. His latest trip, for
example, involves the usual 15% chance he won’t wake from cold
sleep (or Low, as it is called in the argot of the starfarer) but if
he does wake up, it will be on Broome. He should easily find
employment there.

The
best-laid plans, etc. Gloria, the Matriarch of Kund, hires the
starship on which he was traveling, already in cold sleep. He cannot
object when the ship is diverted to the planet Gath. Dumarest’s
contract with the ship specified that he was to debark at the next
world it touched. Was Broome, now Gath.

Gath
has no economy to speak off. No jobs. But unless Dumarest can somehow
accumulate enough cash for a trip out, he is trapped on the planet.

Kitty Goes to Washington —
Carrie Vaughn
Kitty Norville, book 2

2006’s
Kitty
Goes to Washington
is the second volume in Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty
Norville series.

DJ
Kitty Norville receives a subpoena to appear in front of the American
senate. The government has taken note of the supernatural. Lucky
Kitty wins a starring role in the hearings to come. She
is, after all, the best-known werewolf in America.

Hiromu Arakawa & Yoshiki Tanaka
The Heroic Legend of Arslan, book 3

Pars
has fallen and its king has been imprisoned, but Prince Arslan is
still free. Traitor Kharlan is determined to prove his worth by
capturing Arslan. Kharlan has a small army at his command, whereas
Arslan counts but four people in his force — and that only if he
counts himself.

Every Heart a Doorway —
Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children, book 1

2016’s
Nebula and Hugo-winning Every
Heart a Doorway is
the first volume in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward
Children series.

Children
through the ages have stepped through doors to other lands. Some,
like Nancy, return — only to find themselves rejected by families
unable to accept what their children have become. A lucky few, like
Nancy, find their way to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

The Poppy War —
R. F. Kuang
Poppy Wars, book 1

R.
F. Kuang’s 2018 debut The
Poppy War
is the first volume in her secondary world Poppy
Wars
fantasy trilogy.

Faced
with an arranged marriage to an odious merchant (plan A), Fang “Rin”
Runin opts for plan B: pass the arduous Keju test, which will give
her a place at the prestigious academy in Sinegard. The odds that a
war orphan fostered to a family of no particular rank will pass the
exam are poor, but nevertheless, she persists. The highly motivated
Rin places first for the entire Rooster province.

She
soon discovers that winning entrance at Sinegard is not at all the
same thing being accepted there.

Shards of Honor —
Lois McMaster Bujold
Cordelia Vorkosigan, book 1

Lois
McMaster Bujold’s 1986 debut novel Shards
of Honor
is the first Cordelia Vorkosigan book, as well as the first novel set
in Bujold’s Vorkosiverse.

A
Betan exploratory mission has been sent through a newly discovered
wormhole; they have discovered a terrestrial world suitable for
colonization. Unfortunately for the Betans, they are the second group
to discover Sergyar. The Barrayaran militarists were there first and
they don’t want company.

Tsukumizu
Girl's Last Tour, book 1

Girls’
Last Tour, Volume 1,
is the first instalment in Tsukumizu’s Girls’
Last Tour series.

Lost
in a vast, empty, decaying city complex, Chito (the smart one) and
Yuuri (the other one) wander in search of supplies. Failure may be
inevitable; if so, their ultimate fate will be to starve. But at
least they will starve together.

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls —
Aliette de Bodard

Aliette
de Bodard’s 2015 space-opera The
Citadel of Weeping Pearls
is an instalment in her Universe
of Xuya,
an alternate history/future in which the West never dominated the
world. The galaxy is ruled by Confucian powers.

Suu
Nuoc is woken from a sound sleep by his alarmed shipmind, The
Turtle’s Golden Claw.
The artificial intelligence reports that Grand Master of Design
Harmony Bach Cuc has seemingly vanished, in a manner the shipmind
cannot comprehend. As far as The
Turtle’s Golden Claw is
concerned, it is up to Suu Nuoc — an Official of the First Order
despite his low birth — to work out what happened to the missing
scientist.

Winterlong —
Elizabeth Hand
Winterlong Trilogy, book 1

Elizabeth
Hand’s 1990 debut novel Winterlong
is the first volume in her Winterlong Trilogy.

Nuclear
war and germ warfare have left Washington a shadow of its once
glorious past. A handful of administrators, descended from
self-appointed curators, control the relics of America’s lost past,
defending the remnants from the diseased, mutated, and simply unlucky
inhabitants of the surrounding sea of ruins.

A
desperate woman appealed to House Miramar for refuge. Too damaged to
be of use to Miramar, the woman was cast out to die at the hands of
the lazars. But Miramar did keep her two beautiful children, as new
Paphians for Miramar’s bordellos. Only Raphael proved suitable.
Autistic Wendy Wanders was consigned to HEL.

Shadow of a Broken Man —
George C. Chesbro
Mongo, book 1

1977’s
Shadow
of a Broken Man is
the first volume in George C. Chesbro’s long-running Mongo
series.
The Mongo
series lives in the intersection of mundane detective fiction and
outright science fiction. Or at least I think it does.

Former
circus tumbler turned black belt martial artist turned academic,
criminology professor Dr. Robert “Mongo the Magnificent”
Fredrickson has a minor side-line as a private detective. His cases
are often peculiar, as if people with normal cases don’t seek out
New York’s only dwarf detective. Lookism, I suppose.

His
new case seems pretty straightforward: find out how a dead man
managed to design a new building.

Empire in Black and Gold —
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Shadows of the Apt, book 1

2008’s
Empire
in Black and Gold
is the first volume in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows
of the Apt
decalogy. I should note that he completed the whole ten-book series
in eight years. Completed, I say, completed. This may be of interest
to certain other authors whom I will not name.

In
the seventeen years since the Empire of the Wasps conquered the
Commonweal city of Myna, Stenwald has been unable to convince his
fellow citizens that Collegium (as well as the other city-states of
the Lowlands) are on the Wasps’ to-conquer list. Most Lowlanders
find it comforting to believe that the Wasps are sated with conquest.
Stenwald knows that the Empire was merely taking its time to recover
from its long war with the Commonweal.

Hiromu Arakawa & Yoshiki Tanaka
The Heroic Legend of Arslan, book 2

The
Heroic Legend of Arslan, Volume 2
is the second collection of Hiromu Arakawa’s manga adaptation of
Yoshiki Tanaka’s light novel series.

In
volume one, overconfidence and arrogance led King Andragoras and his
vast Parsian army into ambush and defeat at the hands of the
Lusitanian invaders. The King’s fate is unknown. Prince Arslan
escaped, but it is unclear how long he can remain free.

A Darker Shade of Magic —
V. E. Schwab
Shades of Magic, book 1

A
Darker Shade of Magic is
the first volume in V. E. Schwab’s Shades
of Magic series.

Kell
is an Antari, one of two known world-walkers, able to travel between
the four known alternate Londons, White, Red, Gray, and forbidden
Black. His is a gift rare enough to make him a treasured possession
of Red London’s Royal Family.

Officially,
Kell uses his gift to serve as an ambassador between the three
Londons — White, Red, and Gray — that are still in limited contact
with each other. On his own time Kell likes to collect souvenirs.
That’s forbidden. But moving minor trinkets from one world to
another seems a harmless hobby.